Interesting Airplanes

The Air Force has contracted a Boston tech company, Merlin Labs, to investigate partially robotizing its C-130J Super Hercules tactical transport aircraft. The announcement led to about $120 million in fresh investment to develop technologies to retrofit existing aircraft for almost autonomous operation. The tech proposed by Merlin will not deliver gate-to-gate autonomy, but Merlin […]

Van’s unveiled its new RV-15 prototype Saturday in a YouTube video that gathered 7,000 views in the first few hours. The company’s first high-wing design took off in a few hundred feet and climbed briskly in the video. It’s not being billed as a “first flight” but it is the first public release of details […]

Investigators in eastern Europe are looking for those who took a light twin, possibly a Piper Aztec, on a seven-nation tour of the region without letting anyone know they were coming. The sudden appearance of the aircraft, which apparently did not contact any air traffic control authorities, took off Thursday from Lithuania and went through […]

The Biden administration has decided that future presidents will not fly with former President Donald Trump’s colors and says extra costs scuttled the revised paint job on the new VC-25 aircraft now being laboriously built by Boeing. When he signed the paperwork for the new aircraft after personally intervening in the contract talks, Trump ordered […]

Ukrainian forces reusing damaged Russian equipment against them didn’t invent the idea. During the Second World War, a German squadron fixed captured Allied aircraft and used them in sheep’s clothing attacks against the good guys. Now there’s a new movie explaining how it all worked. Lionsgate Movies has released “Wolf Hound” in select theaters and […]

Boeing CEO David Calhoun says it will be at least a couple of years before the company starts working on any new aircraft. He also warned the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference that it will likely be at least 10 years before a clean-sheet design is on the market. The company has been musing about a […]

Despite repeated attempts by Air Force brass to retire it, the A-10 Warthog is getting a billion-dollar lease on life. Boeing announced last week it had started delivering the first 50 of 112 sets of new wings for the close air support platform. The new wings will extend the life of the aircraft by 10,000 […]

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky says he wants to see a partially built An-225 finished to replace the one destroyed in fighting in Hostomel early in the war with Russia. It will cost about $800 million to finish the second aircraft, which has been stored in good condition since getting to about 70 percent complete in […]

China is in danger of pricing itself out of the market with its new C919 narrow body airliner according to The Straits Times. The Singapore publication is reporting the new plane will cost about $100 million, almost as much as the A320neo and Boeing 737 MAX which now dominate that market. China had hoped the […]

Embraer says it will make a decision on whether to proceed with development of its unusual rear-engine turboprop regional aircraft by the middle of 2023. Arjan Meijer, Embraer’s head of commercial aviation, told Reuters the company is in talks with India to partner in development of the aircraft, which will seat 70-90 passengers. The two […]